The Corbus Grande
by Rockhandjive
Summary: The trap is set, the card is placed now all that's left is to wait. Part of the Je Me Souviens series, SSHP insinuated
1. Walk, waif, walk

**Harry Potter  
** _Manutech Special Care_  
London, England

You've left your card, are you happy? On some cheap little piece of poster paper that the homeless man across from my office at _Thomas & Sanchez _could have afforded. How déclassé. How much did you pay, Mr. Potter, £1.00 for a pack of the cards?

Do you honestly expect me to follow you to wherever it is you reside?

Your windows are pathetic, have you even washed them since you moved into that tiny, brick flat? Such grime is hardly befitting someone who works in the medical field.

And you're a matron, how appropriate. Do you wear a little white skirt with red trim?

Really, why would I be interested in you and your pathetic memories? Castles and old men with white beards and silver curtains around a four-posted bed, how droll.

Get out of my dreams, Mr. Potter, you, a stranger really have no place there. My subconscious is just as much mine as my conscious and I do not want the likes of you stepping where angels fear to tread. (So why do you step so bravely there like the Lion in my non-memory?)

Get out! 

Why will you not leave me in my peace? Can I not live this life as I have for every year of my life, without you or your essence flooding my psyche?

Yet…everything is so false. Like some petty illusion erected to protect a small child from the monsters under her bed. But I am no small child, I am a grown man and thoroughly capable of looking after myself. Pathetic really, Mr. Potter, that you assumed you could penetrate my life so eagerly.

We have never met, and though I intend to keep it as such, we know one another, do we not? From a little card I have learned a great deal about you, Mr. Potter.

The doctors and the patients and your fellow colleagues all tell me you are a wonderful nurse. Your neighbours say you pay your taxes on time and one colleague in particular, a Dr. Dean Thomas, says you know me.

How, Mr. Potter, could you possibly be familiar with me when we have never met?

Did you find my invitation left on your doorstep? (Made of proper paper, not the £1 per pack kind, I might add)

**The Corbus Grande**  
_Noon  
__Come alone_

I expect you will come for sheer curiosity's sake. I remember a young voice peering over my shoulder as I worked, nosing its way through my thoughts.

Will you find me here, sitting in the back? Or will you merely favour the masses in this sunny, whitewashed (not as white as a seaside cottage I have yet to view) café with a cursory glance and leave to resume your life?

I shudder at both results in anticipation and a mixture of enchanting, delicious fear slide up my spine as the door opens. It is you, of course, who else could it be…God?

Green eyes…I recall, vaguely that something else was green once, something important and greener than the trees or the deepest of emeralds. What was it that hides behind a fog in my otherwise perfectly organised brain?

Why do you smile at me? You are nothing but a brat, an evil force that plagues me day and night and leaves me gasping and sweating in the aftermath of it all.

Get out, Potter, get out.

You give a façade of outward calm, Mr. Potter, but your steps are hesitant once you spot me, sitting like a statue in these blue and white striped chairs, sipping a glass of Merlot. God forbid you should approach me like an adult.

But you do, picking your way through the sea of other people. People that matter nothing to me. So why are you different? Why do you draw my eyes, you are just like every other patron of this café. But you seem…familiar.

I remember a cat, tortoiseshell in colouring. It liked you more than me and it always wandered like some phantasm, about a seaside cottage made of white walls and silver drapes and a four-posted bed with curtains the moon could shine through. I remember you on a beach somewhere, walking along the sand like you now walk towards me. Walking, walking, walking.

Like the waif that walks my mind.


	2. Fish and chips

**The Corbus Grand  
**_Noon  
Come Alone_

'Mr. Snape?'

'_Dr._ Snape.'

'Yes…er…I'm sorry.'

'Mr. Potter.'

'_Nurse_ Potter.'

Silence, the arching of a perfect eyebrow.

'Er…'

'Perhaps you would care to sit. To my knowledge these chairs are perfectly suitable for a matron.'

'Nurse.'

The eyebrow rises again.

'Are you going to eat anything?'

'Quite.'

'Right…'

'Perhaps, _Nurse_ Potter, you would care to tell me why you have left this atrocity in your wake?'

A business card made of cheap paper is passed across a wooden table.

'You left yours for me.'

'I assure you, that if I had, it was purely accidental.'

Nervous shuffling in a blue and white striped cloth chair.

A waitress arrives.

'Does either of you gentlemen need a menu?'

'No.'

'Yes.'

A menu slides across the wooden table. Work roughened hands grasp it. An eyebrow arches at the quaking paper.

'Another glass for you, sir?'

A nod.

Merlot falls, blood red into a glass. Long fingers grasp the stem as glasses read a menu marked with food stains.

'Would you like anything to drink?'

Owlish eyes blink at a plump woman with a waitressing apron slung low about the hips.

'Do you have any tea?'

'Certainly, the flavours are on the back.'

The menu is turned over.

'Chai would be excellent, thank you.'

A longhaired head nods as the plump woman walks away.

'Chai?'

'Yes…rather good I think. It's a black tea from India.'

'Quite.'

Nervous shuffling. The blue and white striped cloth chair creaks.

'Why have you pursued me, Mr. Potter?'

'Don't you know?'

The waitress returns with a steaming mug in her hands.

'Have you decided on an order yet?'

Two voices speak as one.

'Fish and Chips, light on the salt.'

Blue eyes set in a plump face blink, stunned.

'My, you two certainly have…similar taste.'

Silence.

'Fish and chips it is then.'

The plump waitress walks off.

Green eyes blink owlishly and soft lips curve in a smile.


End file.
